Hakawati has extensive experience of documentary development and production, pitch preparation, curriculum development, audience development, distribution, and impact mapping.

Recent film consultancies include: Revolutionaries Never Die (Mohanad Yaqubi, forthcoming); Time Pieces (Carol Salter, forthcoming); Gay Games (Cherish Otega, forthcoming); How We Work (Yasmin Fedda, 2023)

Experience: Elhum has led workshops all over the world and is particularly attuned to varying positionalities when it comes to funding, impact possibilities and storytelling sensibilities. She has taught in institutional settings (e.g. at Goldsmiths, Freie Universität in Berlin and as a Senior Tutor at UCL), festivals such as Cannes Marche du Film, Sheffield Doc/Fest and the Sarajevo Film Festival, as well as in one-off workshops and local documentary initiatives such as the Beirut Cinema Platform and Beirut Locarno Academy (Lebanon, Caravan Between Women Filmmakers (Egypt), Tatwir and Ateliers Sud Ecriture Tunisia) as well as for the Hot Docs Crosscurrents and Blue Ice Fund (with filmmakers from Armenia, Dominica, Iran, Jordan and Palestine), and Cinedoc (with filmmakers from Georgia, Armenia, Belarus, Russia, Ukraine and Azerbaijan).

Elhum has also been a reader for funds and markets, including BFI Doc Society, Arab Fund for Arts and Culture, Doha Film Institute, EAVE, Film Cymru Wales, Sheffield Doc/Fest MeetMarket, IDFA Forum, Chicken & Egg Pictures, Thessaloniki IFF amongst others.

Bridging the gap between UK festival visibility and distribution, Elhum began devising specialist distribution strategies with titles including Wadjda (Haifaa Al Mansour, 2012) and The Lebanese Rocket Society (Joana Hadjithomas and Khalil Joreige, 2013). In 2015, she self-distributed A Syrian Love Story (Sean McAllister, 2015) in the UK to such high visibility that it was named #3 Best Film of 2015 by the Guardian, screened on successive days prime time on BBC4 and BBC1, reaching an audience of 1.2 million people within a single fortnight in September 2015.

Elhum has devised innovative impact and audience campaigns through Hakawati — notably creating a resource around ISLAND for junior doctors and nurses that is now used by the NHS. She also distributed her productions Even When I Fall (Sky Neal and Dara McLarnon, 2017), Of Love & Law (Hikaru Toda, 2017), Almost Heaven (Carol Salter, 2017) and A Northern Soul (Sean McAllister, 2018). She has also advised on Impact Strategies for a range of films including The Hard Stop (George Amponsah, 2015), and The Worker's Cup (Adam Sobel, 2017).

Please get in touch via info@hakawati.co.uk to discuss further.